This article provides the first systematic estimates of living standards in Al-Andalus (the Muslim-ruled Iberian Peninsula) in 950, 1000, and 1200. Drawing on prices and wages from legal documents an...

The Summer School on Socioeconomic Opportunity and Inequality seeks to provide the next generation of scholars with the multidisciplinary underpinning necessary for effective research on inequality dy...

Introduction Child stunting, a measure of malnutrition, is a major global health challenge affecting 148.1 million children in 2022. Global stunting rates have declined from 47.2% in 1985 to 22.3% in ...

How new technology reshaped the political equilibrium of the early Iron Age through violence.

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What can we learn about institutional transplantation by analyzing craft guilds in colonial Latin America? We use large language models (LLMs) to investigate colonial guild ordinances, addressing two major bottlenecks in assessing institutions: digitizing qualitative sources efficiently and analyzing them quantitatively. Our newly designed methodology reveals both long-term continuities and striking differences between craft guilds in colonial Mexico and Peru, particularly with regard to human capital and product quality. The LLM-based approach identifies patterns that were previously not discernible using standard methods in economic history, its results are reproducible, and it can easily be extended to other historical settings.

In this keynote lecture, prof. Sheilagh Ogilvie will explain how societies have historically managed epidemics through various social institutions.

Abstract. We study the dynamics of capital accumulation, income inequality, capital concentration, and voting up to 1914. Based on new panel data for Prussian regions, we reevaluate the famous revisio...

We show that state legal capacity contributed to economic development during the Industrial Revolution. The British parliament relied on local magistrates, known as Justices of the Peace (JPs), to enforce property rights, resolve disputes, and administer public services. Areas with greater legal capacity – more JPs – in 1700 experienced greater population growth and structural change over 140 years. More legal capacity also led to more human capital, fiscal capacity, and infrastructure development. Plausibly exogenous variation in the location of JPs supports a causal interpretation of the findings. These results illustrate the importance of street-level legal institutions for economic outcomes.

2 years postdoc with a thematic focus on Migration, Diaspora, Citizenship

Abstract. This paper studies the economic and political effects of a large trade shock in agriculture—the grain invasion from the Americas—in Prussia durin

Abstract. We provide a blueprint for constructing measures of state capacity in premodern states, offering several advantages over the current state of the

Research Officer (Centre for Macroeconomics), , <p style="text-align: center;"><em><span>LSE is committed to building a diverse, equitable and truly inclusive university</span></em></p> <p style="text...